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System Thinker Notebook | James Shelley

System Thinker Notebook

by James Shelley

This is the online (now expanded and continually updated) version of a teaching and coaching resource I published in January 2018.

The primary goal of this resource is to foster systemic and holistic reflection. I am especially interested in describing how a systems level approach might inform the way we think about strategic planning, research and analysis, project design, and program evaluation. The System Thinker Notebook aims to provide an accessible, shared ‘lexicon’ for bolstering the strategic capacity of groups and organizations.

A key feature of this project is that it is in perpetual development. I use the word ‘notebook’ intentionally, to differentiate this document from a formal ‘book.’ I will keep adding and adapting this resource as I go along. One of the principle takeaways from studying complexity is an acute sense of how little one person alone can comprehend about the totality of the system around them: to open the door to complexity is to accept a state of personal ignorance indefinitely. Every time I teach or facilitate on this topic, I learn so much from others: pedagogy is a mutual affair. It takes a community to think holistically. Therefore, this is a ‘notebook’ because I have no intentions of ever considering it ‘complete.’

Table of Contents

• System Concepts
  • Bathtub
  • Interconnectedness
    • Blackout
    • Epiglottis
  • Dispersed Knowledge Systems
  • Leadership in Systems
  • Bathtub Universe
  • Stock and Flow
  • What is in the bathtub?
    • PowerPoint Fail?
  • Leverage Points
    • Dials and Knobs
    • Buffers and Stabilizers
    • Infrastructure
    • Delays
    • Negative (Self-correcting) Feedback Loops
    • Positive (Self-reinforcing) Feedback Loops
      • Network Effect
    • Information Flows
    • Rules
    • Self-Organization
      • Emergence: Flocks, Herds, and Schools
    • Goals
    • Paradigms
    • Transcendence
    • Meadow’s Hierarchy
• Grappling with Complexity
  • Air, Guppies, and Carbon
    • Life = Disequilibrium
      • Metabolism
      • Rodents, Whales, and You
      • A Coffee Mug in the Universe
      • Systems as Organisms
  • For the Want of a Nail
  • Recipes, Rockets, and Raising Children
  • Fractals
  • Ant Colonies vs Combustion Engines
    • Beyond Newton
    • Consilience
    • Coopetition
    • Life as Cooperation?
    • Segregation
• Leadership in Complex Systems
  • Pinball
    • Forecasting and Swans
  • Cynefin Framework
  • System Interventionist Mindsets
  • Unintended Consequences
    • The Cobra Effect
    • Hydra Problems
    • Iatrogenesis
  • Scrum
  • Evolutionary Mindset
  • Network Mindset
• Thought Experiments
  • Humble Inquiry: or, How to circumvent the pernicious inclination to fix other people
  • Upstream
  • Biopsychosocial Model
    • Predictions versus Patterns
  • General John
  • Voracity Effect
  • Seven Generations
  • Switches and Meaning

By James Shelley. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permalink: https://jamesshelley.com?p=16939jamesshelley.com › Manuscripts › System Thinker Notebook¶ Other manuscripts

• Simplicity Praxis

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System Thinker Notebook | James Shelley

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(PDF) A glimpse at the metaphysics of Bongard problems

Glimpse at the metaphysics of Bongard problems

• August 2000
• Artificial Intelligence 121(1-2):251-270

DOI: 10.1016/S0004-3702(00)00042-4

• Project: FARG architectures

Authors:

Alexandre Linhares

Abstract and Figures

Bongard problems present an outstanding challenge to artificial intelligence. They consist of visual pattern understanding problems on which the task of the pattern perceiver is to find an abstract aspect of distinction between two classes of figures. This paper examines the philosophical question of whether objects in Bongard problems can be ascribed an a priori, metaphysical, existence—the ontological question of whether objects, and their boundaries, come pre-defined, independently of any understanding or context. This is an essential issue, because it determines whether a priori symbolic representations can be of use for solving Bongard problems. The resulting conclusion of this analysis is that in the case of Bongard problems there can be no units ascribed an a priori existence—and thus the objects dealt with in any specific problem must be found by solution methods (rather than given to them). This view ultimately leads to the emerging alternatives to the philosophical doctrine of metaphysical realism.

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(PDF) Glimpse at the metaphysics of Bongard problems

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How to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas | Aeon Essays

Cognition all the way down

Biology’s next great horizon is to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas (even if unthinking ones)

Close-up detail of the Papilio demoleus malayanus, the lime butterfly. Photo by Joel Sartore/National Geographic

Michael Levin

is the Vannevar Bush chair and Distinguished Professor of biology at Tufts University in Massachusetts, where he directs the Allen Discovery Center and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology.

Daniel C Dennett

is the Austin B Fletcher professor of philosophy and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is the author of more than a dozen books, the latest of which is From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds (2017). He lives in Massachusetts.

5,500 words

Edited by Nigel Warburton

Biologists like to think of themselves as properly scientific behaviourists, explaining and predicting the ways that proteins, organelles, cells, plants, animals and whole biota behave under various conditions, thanks to the smaller parts of which they are composed. They identify causal mechanisms that reliably execute various functions such as copying DNA, attacking antigens, photosynthesising, discerning temperature gradients, capturing prey, finding their way back to their nests and so forth, but they don’t think that this acknowledgment of functions implicates them in any discredited teleology or imputation of reasons and purposes or understanding to the cells and other parts of the mechanisms they investigate.

But when cognitive science turned its back on behaviourism more than 50 years ago and began dealing with signals and internal maps, goals and expectations, beliefs and desires, biologists were torn. All right, they conceded, people and some animals have minds; their brains are physical minds – not mysterious dualistic minds – processing information and guiding purposeful behaviour; animals without brains, such as sea squirts, don’t have minds, nor do plants or fungi or microbes. They resisted introducing intentional idioms into their theoretical work, except as useful metaphors when teaching or explaining to lay audiences. Genes weren’t really selfish, antibodies weren’t really seeking, cells weren’t really figuring out where they were. These little biological mechanisms weren’t really agents with agendas, even though thinking of them as if they were often led to insights.

We think that this commendable scientific caution has gone too far, putting biologists into a straitjacket that prevents them from exploring the most promising hypotheses, just as behaviourism prevented psychologists from seeing how their subjects’ measurable behaviour could be interpreted as effects of hopes, beliefs, plans, fears, intentions, distractions and so forth. The witty philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser once asked B F Skinner: ‘You think we shouldn’t anthropomorphise people?’– and we’re saying that biologists should chill out and see the virtues of anthropomorphising all sorts of living things. After all, isn’t biology really a kind of reverse engineering of all the parts and processes of living things? Ever since the cybernetics advances of the 1940s and ’50s, engineers have had a robust, practical science of mechanisms with purpose and goal-directedness – without mysticism. We suggest that biologists catch up.

continues in source:

How to understand cells, tissues and organisms as agents with agendas | Aeon Essays

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The Cybernetics’ Difference! CybSights—The President’s Series Tickets, Wed 9 Dec 2020 at 17:00 | Eventbrite

DEC

09

The Cybernetics’ Difference! CybSights—The President’s Series

by Cybernetics Society — President’s SeriesFollowing£0 – £7.50

Event Information

The President’s Series features distinguished speakers on issues of our time. This explores purposefulness and the ‘world we want to world’

About this Event

Hosted by our President, Dr. John Beckford FCybS, the CybSights President’s Series is a new programme that will bring interesting people together to explore the relevance and contribution of cybernetics to addressing important challenges.

Each event will consist of contributions by two different speakers. Each will be followed by individual Q&A. These are then brought together by the President in a lively and engaging plenary discussion. Each will seek areas of convergence and divergence between the ideas explored.

Events will be held via Zoom on the 2nd Wednesday of each month from 1700 to 1900.

Meetings are open to members of the Cybernetics Society and also the general public. Non-members are invited to join or give a donation. Booking is required.

The Cybernetics Society has been hosting conversations and lectures since the late 1960s.

#PS3 : December 9: The Cybernetics Difference & our Future World

Addressing the distinct “go” of cybernetics and its value for contemporary and future science and society. The two speakers, both fellows of the Society, speak about transformations in thinking: the inverted scientific logic of causality that cybernetics brings, recognising purpose, and the question of what we humans want to do with our purposefulness in the making of the world.

Introduction and Welcome: Dr. John Beckford, FCybS, President of the Cybernetics Society

John Beckford is a partner in Beckford Consulting, Non-Executive Chair of the Board of Rise Mutual CIC, a Non-Executive Director of both Fusion21 and CoreHaus (social enterprises) and Visiting Professor in both the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London and the Centre for Information Management, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University. John holds a PhD in cybernetics from the University of Hull, is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and of the Royal Society for the Arts and a Member of the Institute of Management Services. He is President of the Cybernetics Society.

Angus Jenkinson, FCybS, Secretary of the Cybernetics Society and Director of the Centre for Thinking Futures

Why is cybernetics so important?

So important that it should become a major curriculum subject and essential for every senior manager, policymaker, designer, engineer, or ecologist — and many other disciplines? Angus will argue it does four things that change our understanding of the world. 4 ‘things’ that no other generally accepted science addresses so clearly. 1. Active instead of passive causality. 2. Tame instead of wicked problems. 3. Sensitive solutions to problem situations. 4. Active learning and dynamic design. These lead to the understanding that the world has two great orders of nature.

1 > When science rejected goal-driven behaviour in the 1600s it lost the ability to explain the behaviour of every living creature and every social institution. When cybernetics brought it back in the 20th century it provided the foundation for understanding and resolving the most difficult challenges of our time and times to come.

Conventional science until then — and still for many — thought the world operated on passive causality. Things happen to things and so energy and motion were transferred. Whatever happened was because of something that had already happened being transferred to it. By forces. As cause. Then cybernetics proved and demonstrated that there was active causality. All living creatures actively produce what they do. And do their best to make sure that nothing prevents it. That turns our understanding of the world inside out. And restores common sense.

2 > It turns wicked problems into tame problems. The advanced cybernetic designer knows how to filter the supposed problem to the real issues that will produce the desired outcome. It can do that with exquisite precision. There are many wicked problems. Such a technology is invaluable.

3 > Cybernetics runs on the experience that organisms have of the world. It knows how that works — whether it’s a butterfly or a global enterprise. It’s founded on the join between people and their world, living creatures and their world. That’s why it can help with ecological, social, and design challenges, from AI to saving butterflies and forests.

4 > Cybernetics is the science of living behaviour, achievement of success, and crucially of learning. It is the science — and discipline — that deals with a dynamic world. Old ideas do not work in new situations. Cybernetics explains how the very process of living is a process of learning and how we can turn that into the design of learning and adaptive behaviour.>> The world of the 21st-century therefore has two great orders of nature. The first is the world of passive causality, mechanical objects and technologies, things. Scientific technology has been mostly brilliant at this. (But they can do harm to the living.) The second is the world of active causality, the living, and the technologies that reflect this. Scientific technology has varied from the so-so to the awful at this. This century we need to solve the problems of the past for the sake of the future. The problems and ways to deal with them are social, technical, and eminently practical.

Angus Jenkinson is the Secretary of the Society, a former business professor, tech entrepreneur, systems and thinking tools designer, consultant and CEO/company chair He is an organisational philosopher.and is developing a new scientific theory of organisations, called propriopoiesis. He has had a solo exhibition of photographic artworks.

Followed by discussion and Q & A

SECOND SPEAKER

Professor Peter Kawalek FCybS

Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene – Cybernetics, Wellbeing and the Future of the Planet.

Synopsis: Central to Donna Haraway’s “Staying With The Trouble” is the reconceptualization of autopoiesis as sympoiesis; one of a number of concepts through which she calls the Anthropocene to its end and articulates the Chthulucene – a higher variety, multi-species, ecologically conducive era of diverse relationships. This is not my normal territory as Professor of Information Management but I once sat with Stafford Beer as he expounded on failures of thought, curricula and teaching, and expressed how he felt the impoverishment of thinking impoverished the world. I have reflected on that conversation several times whilst engaging with Donna Haraway’s work and felt, similar to my first reaction to Stafford’s work, a surge of excitement at the complexity and the potential. As Haraway puts it, it is important to consider what worlds world worlds. Look out for the variety expressed in kin, plantations and string figures as I grapple with her latest work.

Bio: Professor Peter Kawalek FCybS is Director of the Centre for Information Management at the School of Business & Economics in Loughborough University. He has additional visiting positions at Letterkenny Institute of Technology, Ireland, and Deusto Business School, Basque Country. Previously of Manchester Business School, Warwick Business School and School of Computer Science at Manchester. He also has wide experience working with organizations including Siemens AG., SAP, IBM, Office an Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in Dublin, the Department of Communities and Local Government (London), City Council, Salford City Council, Lancashire Constabulary, Greater Manchester Police. Peter has held and managed over £2m in research grants from government and research councils. What Peter hopes to be known for is actual contribution – that maybe there is something to show on the ground for his various ideas and projects.

Followed by discussion and Q & A

Plenary Discussion

The aim of this session, moderated by John Beckford, is to draw out the complementary and competing ideas emerging from the two sessions.

Cybernetics Society – a learned society

The Cybernetics Society promotes and offers education and research opportunities in the rich field of cybernetics. In the CybSights series, including the President’s Series, we offer isghts conversations, lectures, case studies, analysis, education, and thoughtful entertainment.,

The Cybernetics Society – http://CybSoc.org – is a specially authorised learned society regulated by the FSA and established by a 1974 Act of Parliament. To join visit our membership system or pick the Join ticket.

Cybernetics plays into and strongly influences many scientific and practice fields including design, epistemology, ecology, biology, psychology and living behaviour, technology and engineering, social policy, and business practice, amongst others. Many feature in this wonderful set of aware and successful designers and thinkers.

Cybernetics offers a distinct “go” — techniques — to address local and global challenges of the 21st century.

book at source:

The Cybernetics’ Difference! CybSights—The President’s Series Tickets, Wed 9 Dec 2020 at 17:00 | Eventbrite

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Design Decisions and Police Practice —The President’s Series Tickets, Wed 11 Nov 2020 at 17:00 | Eventbrite

NOV 11

Design Decisions and Police Practice —The President’s Series

by Cybernetics Society — President’s SeriesFollowing£0 – £7.50

Event Information

The President’s Series features distinguished speakers on issues of our time, such as these practice questions

About this Event

Hosted by our President, Dr. John Beckford FCybS, the CybSights President’s Series is a new programme that will bring interesting people together to explore the relevance and contribution of cybernetics to addressing important challenges.

Each event will consist of contributions by two different speakers. Each will be followed by individual Q&A. These are then brought together by the President in a lively and engaging plenary discussion. Each will seek areas of convergence and divergence between the ideas explored.

Events will be held via Zoom on the 2nd Wednesday of each month from 1700 to 1900.

Meetings are open to members of the Cybernetics Society and also the general public. Non-members are invited to join or give a donation. Booking is required.

The Cybernetics Society has been hosting conversations and lectures since the late 1960s.

#2 : November 11: Deciding & Intelligence

Addressing the distinct “go” of cybernetics and its value for contemporary and future science and society, the two speakers explore decisions through design and policing, intelligence and ethical choice.

Introduction and Welcome: Dr. John Beckford, FCybS, President of the Cybernetics Society

FIRST SPEAKER: Dr Ben Sweeting, FCybS

Undeciding the decidable

Synopsis: Heinz von Foerster’s distinction between decidable and undecidable decisions is often taken to imply an ethics of personal responsibility, summed up in the phrase ‘only we can decide the undecidable’. Taken together with the invocation to ‘increase the number of choices’, von Foerster implies an ethics that is personal and pluralistic. This approach is helpful as a critique of moralism but it is a limited guide in situations characterised by conflict, inequality, or the need for collective action.

In this presentation, I return to von Foerster’s discussion of undecidability in order to suggest a different way of thinking about its ethical implications. Whereas von Foerster traces undecidability back to foundational metaphysical questions, positioning the ethical within a choice between distinct worldviews, I use the example of design to explore the decidable and undecidable within the context of practical tasks. I argue that it is not enough for us to decide upon (take responsibility for) the undecidable questions that we encounter: we must also undecide the decidable decisions that are given within the contexts in which we are living, increasing the number of choices as a process of critique rather than as a pluralisation of options.

_Dr Ben Sweeting FCybS teaches architecture and design at the University of Brighton. He studied architecture at the University of Cambridge and University College London, completing a PhD at the latter with Neil Spiller and Ranulph Glanville. Ben is an active member of the UK Cybernetics Society, the American Society for Cybernetics (ASC), and the Systemic Design Association and has co-guest edited special issues of Kybernetes, Constructivist Foundations, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, and FormAkademisk. Ben received the Heinz von Foerster Award from the ASC in 2014..

Followed by discussion and Q & A

SECOND SPEAKER: Professor Louise Cooke

Helping the Police with their enquiries: Managing knowledge in law enforcement.

This talk reflects on a varied body of work ‘helping the police with their enquiries’. It is no secret that policing is a knowledge-intensive and intelligence-led occupation. However, despite this focus on intelligence, many police forces would not hesitate to acknowledge gaps in their data, information and knowledge management practices. These include (but are not limited to) lack of uniformity and interoperability of systems, both within and between the 43 UK forces; information recording practices that date back to the turn of the twentieth century (the ‘bobby and his notebook’); information and knowledge silos; and a failure to grasp the opportunities offered by knowledge exchange with other emergency services. The talk will discuss a range of knowledge management-related projects carried out by the speaker in collaboration with a range of law enforcement agencies, and the key lessons learned from each. Bio: Professor Louise Cooke is Professor of Information & Knowledge Management in the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University. She has a BA in Library Science and Modern European Studies; an MA in Library and Information Science; and a PhD in Information Science. Her working career spans work placements at the ICI Paints Research Centre and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Pest Infestation Control Laboratory in Slough; the BBC Film & Videotape Library in Brentford; PAS Research; Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College; City University, London; and Loughborough University. Her research interests focus on information and knowledge management in the public sector, and particularly in law enforcement agencies; and regulatory mechanisms in information management.

Followed by discussion and Q & A and then

Plenary Discussion

The aim of this session, moderated by John Beckford, is to draw out the complementary and varied ideas emerging from the two sessions.

Prof John Beckford FCybS is a partner in Beckford Consulting, Non-Executive Chair of the Board of Rise Mutual CIC, a Non-Executive Director of both Fusion21 and CoreHaus (social enterprises) and Visiting Professor in both the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University College London and the Centre for Information Management, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University. John holds a PhD in cybernetics from the University of Hull, is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and of the Royal Society for the Arts and a Member of the Institute of Management Services. He is President of the Cybernetics Society.

Cybernetics Society – a learned society

The Cybernetics Society promotes and offers education and research opportunities in the rich field of cybernetics. In the CybSights series, including the President’s Series, we offer isghts conversations, lectures, case studies, analysis, education, and thoughtful entertainment.,

The Cybernetics Society – http://CybSoc.org – is a specially authorised learned society regulated by the FSA and established by a 1974 Act of Parliament. To join visit our membership system or pick the Join ticket.

Cybernetics plays into and strongly influences many scientific and practice fields including design, epistemology, ecology, biology, psychology and living behaviour, technology and engineering, social policy, and business practice, amongst others. Many feature in this wonderful set of aware and successful designers and thinkers.

Cybernetics offers a distinct “go” — techniques — to address local and global challenges of the 21st century.

book in source:

Design Decisions and Police Practice —The President’s Series Tickets, Wed 11 Nov 2020 at 17:00 | Eventbrite

Corporate Seagulls, Smart Alecs, & Enterprise Antics in a Cybernetic Lens Tickets, Tue 24 Nov 2020 at 18:00 | Eventbrite

NOV 24

Corporate Seagulls, Smart Alecs, & Enterprise Antics in a Cybernetic Lens

by CybSights: The Insights SeriesFollow£0 – £5

Event Information

A live research conversation about cybernetics, biz and models (etc) between Hon Fellow Stephen J. Brewis and the Secretary, Angus Jenkinson

About this Event

The Insights Series is an eclectic and learned collection of monthly events on the 4th Tuesday of each month. There will be lectures, seminars, conversations, debates, participation, all advancing our knowledge of cybernetics and its applications to real world needs.

It is the science of achievement, the great meta-discipline of our time.

Events are normally curated and hosted by the Secretary, Angus Jenkinson, FCybS. Get in touch of you ahve an idea. Attendance is free. Non-members are invited to make a donation or Join.

The Cybernetics Society has been hosting conversations and lectures since the late 1960s. We also have an Annual Conference. Videos are shared on our YouTube Channel.

Seagulls? Smart Alecs? What is this about?

Corporate Seagulls: wiki says: The seagull style of management may be indicative of a manager who is untrained, inexperienced or newly-appointed.

Smart Alecs: opinion about: Cyberneticians who think they know better. Maybe they do?

Inquiry: Both approaches may lack the praxis, the glue that joins the two together i.e. Theory without practice is useless, practice without theory is dangerous. And expertise that does not reach those who need it is wasted.

This is a conversation between Stephen Brewis HonFCybS and Angus Jenkinson FCybS with audience participation.

It will flow freely to and fro, questioning and probing, exploring and researching together around such vital questions as:

1. How can cybernetic language become accessible and more powerful?
2. How does cybernetics solve significant enterprise problems?
3. What do companies need to work more effectively?
4. How do we improve both the freedom of individuals and the performance of enterprises?

Stephen J Brewis

Stephen Brewis is an honorary fellow of the Society, a former chief scientist at BT whose cybernetic modelling made huge financial difference, improved quality, and enhanced the working life of people. He now runs his own consultancy as well as having academic fellowships.

Angus Jenkinson FCybS

Angus Jenkinson is the Secretary of the Society, a former Professor, tech entrepreneur, consultant, and business leader. He is researching a new theory of organisations, called propriopoiesis.

Stephen and Angus have regular collegiate research conversations and think that it could be an interesting stimulus to share. Together they have rethought certain ideas, found new language, and challenged each other to go deeper — join in!

Interspersed with audience discussion and Q & A

Cybernetics Society – a learned society to join?

Cybernetics offers a distinct “go” — techniques — to address local and global challenges of the 21st century.

The Cybernetics Society promotes and offers education and research opportunities in the rich field of cybernetics. It is a specially authorised learned society regulated by the FSA and established by a 1974 Act of Parliament. To join visit our membership system or pick the Join ticket. We give MCybS and FCybS postnomal awards.

Cybernetics and the Society seek understanding of the vast domain of active causation, internally controlled behaviour towards outcomes of value in living and non-living organizations. We cultivate the principles and praxis required to design policies, interventions, and innovations for social and ecological weal.

Cybernetics plays into and strongly influences many scientific and practice fields including design, epistemology, ecology, biology, psychology and living behaviour, technology and engineering, social policy, and business practice, amongst others. Many feature in this wonderful set of aware and successful designers and thinkers.

We are interested in people who are learners, advisers, researchers, academics, designers, leaders. Those involved in policy and practice — think tanks, central and local government, enterprises, foundations, academic and civil society institutions. These may range from Rowntree to RSA, Royal Society to the Royal Institute of British Architects, the local housing association to the UN. We place great importance on the value of cybernetics for better business. From startups to global giants, cybernetics offers powerful insight and tools for enterprise.

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Corporate Seagulls, Smart Alecs, & Enterprise Antics in a Cybernetic Lens Tickets, Tue 24 Nov 2020 at 18:00 | Eventbrite

Jukka Mallinen: A Finnish Dissident – The Northern European :: UpNorth

[original title, which I believe is incorrect: Jukka Mallinen: A Finnish Dissident]

by Jukka Mallinen

Juuso Salokorpi (editor): The Arithmetic of the Greatness of Ilmari Susiluoto

Helsinki. 2020. 413 pages.

The twists and turns in the career of Russian researcher Ilmari Susiluoto (1947 – 2016) are themselves a reflection of Finland’s traumatic relationship with Russia. He was an independent researcher and a presidential advisor who became mired in the bureaucratic politics of Finland’s relations with its Eastern neighbour.

Well-known Russian scholars, Soviet trade veterans and journalists take a retrospective look at his career in a memoir titled “The Arithmetic of the Greatness of Ilmari Susiluoto”. The book has been edited by Juuso Salokorpi, Ilmari’s cousin and schoolmate, who was once an international banker in Moscow and London.

1960

In the mid-19th century, Susiluoto was a board member of the Helsinki New Left Schoolboys and Schoolgirls
Society. Several Finnish left-wing politicians and intellectuals emerged from this famous association. But he
maintained (kept) his intellectual and critical freedom, when most of this group betrayed the ideals of “the generation of 1968” accepting communist ideology or careers in service of advancing finlandization.

In 1982, his book, “The Origin and Development of System Thinking in the Soviet Union” which focused on the early

stages of Soviet cybernetics, a policy that was internationally regarded as being bold and innovative,  was even noted by Alec Nove in “Soviet Studies”. The issue of cybernetics was politically sensitive in The Soviet Union, because it was invented by Lenin’s opponents Anatoly Bogdanov and  Nikolai Bukharin. They presented an alternative to Stalin’s “barrack style” communism with early Soviet cybernetics, and predicted Norbert Wiener’s theories that appeared in the West, 50 years later.

The challenges of a planned economy provided a peculiar perspective on cybernetics. Cybernetic socialism was accused of being too technocratic. Bogdanov’s and Bukharin’s theory of equilibrium threatened the party’s leading role.

continues in source:

Jukka Mallinen: A Finnish Dissident – The Northern European :: UpNorth

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Home – Allen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversityAllen Discovery Center at Tufts University

Allen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversitySearchEnter search termChoose search location                   This site                     Tufts.edu                   Submit

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Reading and Writing the Morphogenetic Code

The Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University is a center of fundamental research on anatomical homeostasis. Dr. Levin and his team focus on reading and editing the biophysical control circuits that underlie the Morphogenetic Code. Explore the concepts outlined in our White Paper, and imagine the breakthroughs to come.

Read the White Paper

The Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University focuses on reading and writing the Morphogenetic Code, which orchestrates how cells communicate to create and repair complex anatomical shapes. Our interdisciplinary effort explores the role that bioelectrical signaling plays in pattern memory and decision-making by somatic cell networks. By understanding these dynamics, the team will create the first quantitative theories of top-down pattern control along with protocols and instrumentation that show how pattern can be rationally modified. Addressing fundamental questions at the intersection of embryogenesis, computation, evolution, and synthetic morphology, this work explores a key frontier within the dark matter of biology: how information processing in cells implements robust control of large-scale patterning.

Led by developmental biologist Michael Levin, the team is comprised of researchers with expertise in biology, computer science, and engineering from Tufts University, Harvard University, Princeton University, University of Chicago, and Tel Aviv University. Together we are using molecular genetics, biophysics, and developmental physiology, as well as techniques from the information sciences and AI to build new tools to exploit endogenous bioelectric pathways. The basic findings will drive diverse applications in regenerative medicine, birth defects, cancer biology, and bioengineering.

Just one of two such centers in the country (the second is at Stanford University), the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University is generously supported by The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, which is committed to funding research at the frontiers of biological sciences.

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Home – Allen Discovery Center at Tufts UniversityAllen Discovery Center at Tufts University

Politics: Power versus Love (It’s not what you think)

The Seeing Systems Blog: Politics: Power versus Love (It’s not what you think)

source:

Tools for Viable Organizing

Tools for Viable Organizing

Kyle Thompson

This article is also available in PDF form, suitable for printing.Organizing is difficult, and often exhausting work. It means bringing together strangers and facing a hostile environment along with them.

To help, this pamphlet introduces the structure for developing viable organizations. By viability, I mean the ability to adapt to and survive changes in the environment. The structure of viable organizations lets members share important information with those who need it, while filtering out noise. This ability to adapt and channel information allows for quick responses to danger or need, without losing sight of the big picture.

This structure has been used in many co-ops, as well as in the democratic revolution of 1970-1973 in Chile.

The Viable System Model

The Viable System Model (VSM) gives us this structure for building viable organizations. We can also use it to check if our organizations are set up to survive hostile environments. Any viable system should look like the VSM, so don’t be surprised if you are already doing a lot of what it suggests.

The VSM has six parts, called systems. These don’t need to be their own offices or committees, but every viable organization should somehow include all six functions…

continues in source:

Tools for Viable Organizing

The Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull (UK) has an exciting opportunity for the right person: a PhD scholarship, co-sponsored by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), starting in Autumn 2021, with fieldwork starting in Autumn 2022.

For the fieldwork part of their studies, the student will be placed in Defra, and will work with them on the development of a new systems methodology to support cross-departmental working and science-policy integration in the context of land use policy-making.

While the advert for the scholarship (see the link below) talks about the kinds of degree courses relevant to this research, we are less interested in the disciplinary background of applicants, and more interested in their understanding of systems thinking, their creativity in tackling challenges and developing solutions, their openness to partnership working with national government agencies, and their ability to write to publication standard.

The supervisors of the student will be Prof Gerald Midgley (Hull), Dr Amanda Gregory (Hull) and Dr Dan McGonigle (Defra).

Applications from people in the UK and overseas are welcome

If covid-19 travel restrictions are lifted before the placement with Defra commences in Autumn 2022, then residence within easy reach of Defra’s London office will be expected, but if travel restrictions are still in force during the placement with Defra, then you will be able to work remotely.

https://panorama-dtp.ac.uk/research/systems-thinking-for-land-use-policy-making/

Gerald’s post on Facebook in The Ecology of Systems Thinking group:

The Ecology of Systems Thinking | Facebook